AuthorTopic: Google OS (Read 11901 times)

I grabbed the link Nightflier posted at thread top, emailed it to about a dozen of my fellow Windows developers, many dedicated MS fans (who secretly *nix in darkened closets . All of them have > 15 years continuous experience, some going back as far as DOS with GW-Basic, and CPM.

To a person, their responses to Goggle's action can be summed up by one of the most Evanglistic MS developers I know:

" They are going to kill Microsoft pretty quickly. "

What you might not be considering is that the bandwidth of the 'net is going to continue to increase to the point that you won't know (or care maybe) if the apps and data are on a local drive or in a cloud. The other *big* factor will be what I call "tollware" ... you don't buy an OS or apps - you just get the pieces you need. One time, small fee, or continuous very small fee. The model is moving from Microsoft's "Money Machine" to the cell-phone plan.

I am not a Microsoft basher - I owe them essentially *two* full careers - and I like all the OSes (well, ok except OS2 ...but I think we are witnessing the start of a serious assault on MS.

my 2 bits-Howard

I don't think so. For a couple of key reasons.

1. Very few IT departments are willing to give up that kind of control to a third party. 2. Most users with more than a bit of computer experience aren't going to give up total control of their system that easily.

I've used dumb terminals in the past. (Yes, I was in IT back in the bad old days) They suck.

I highly doubt this will be a Microsoft killer. What Google is doing is trying to force a new way of thinking as far as web access. If all you're going to do is connect to the internet, surf, type up a document or two, then sure, a netbook with Google OS makes a lot of sense. But it's a niche market and not one I see catching on in mainstream computing. What do you do when you don't have access to the internet? The way the OS is going to be loaded, you can't do anything with it. It's designed to connect to Google. That's it.

No. I think Google has smoked a bit too much with this one and is caught up in their own pipe dream.

I've used dumb terminals in the past. (Yes, I was in IT back in the bad old days) They suck.

Why? the fact that the terminal and the server can be in the same machine is, in almost all the cases, accidental.

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What do you do when you don't have access to the internet?

Well, I can't do almost anything useful while I am not connected to the Internet with my Desktop either. Soon or late I need a doc that I dont have. Any computer without Internet connection is not very useful imho.

Logged

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

I kind of see where you're coming from on this. It's difficult to for us all to get a handle on such a huge topic - not to mention that we're speculating about the future, eh? After all, an inventor might come along with the quantum space-time flux capacitor and change everything.

My programming pals and I are thinking long range. I agree about dumb terminals of yore - but the comparison of internet terminals with old escape-sequence ASCII green screens is only partly correct. Looking at current trends, in a few years, the 'modern' internet terminal will be anything but dumb: imagine that your solid-state disk terminal has a GPU running 12,000 threads supporting a neural network along with multi-core, low power CPUs, tons of memory, and good batteries, all in a pocket-sized package. The neural net helps you find data and code, the CPUs crunch it.

All of these machines may well be pretty tightly coupled - If I were needing to crunch some huge data set, I might be willing to budget in extra power from a "CPU Cycle Rental Company" - of course, google is already working on that

> 1. Very few IT departments are willing to give up that kind of control to a third party.

Then again, it depends on who's in control. It's all in the contracts and the laws these are built on. Consider how many companies have been using third parties to run their data centers, do network admin., and hardware support. IBM, DELL, and Ross Perot's folks - to name a few of the hundreds of companies - offer IT soup-to-nuts. Via the contractual agreements, they become less a third party and are absorbed into the company. Granted, you are pointing out that IT folks are unwilling to give up control to some amorphous cloud. (Just ask any admin what a few hundred developers with swap-drives taken to and from home and work can do to a large corporate network.) That's where the contracts come in. As Google is begining to offer OS and App functionality - if contractually safe - and at significantly lower rates, the money will follow - that's why MS *is* really worried. If Google can offer data center functionality, etc. at lower rates too, then IBM, et. al., will be in doodoo too.

2. Most users with more than a bit of computer experience aren't going to give up total control of their system that easily.

This applies only to the home or very small office. Most users with any level of computer experience in a corporate environment have little control over their own machines. Good thing too. I would even argue that, on Windows at least, home and home office users have only limited control - just pop open your event logs after a month, or better, look into the registry after a year ... I'd bet dollars to harddisks we have no idea what %90 of that stuff is ... then there's Windows Update, Virus Scanners, IE and Firefox 'plug ins' yada yada yada --- about the only real contol we have is watching, killing a task, removing software - or the favorite Windows hobby: Reinstalling.

The easier and cheaper you make it work, the more literal control I'm willing to give up, while retaining our contractual rights. Consider the flip side: what if Microsoft made Win7 available for only $10 - but to get one copy, you would have to fill out 30 pages of info and legal forms, with lots of time-consuming, tedious data? Right, we'd all move to VL in a hurry

[EDIT: >The way the OS is going to be loaded, you can't do anything with it. It's designed to connect to Google. That's it.

That's exactly why Microsoft is worried. It only has to be a portal into Google's growing functionality. After MS screwed up on the Internet, they realized what they missed - and already then knew what google was up to. MS made a failed counter with "MSN" - it failed because it didn't become the de facto world portal that google now is. It failed because MS got there second and late. At the time (and maybe now too) MS had the biggest network in the world - they had the infrastructure and would have loved to hear you say instead:

"The way the [Microsoft] OS is going to be loaded, you can't do anything with it [other than what MS allows]. It's designed to connect to Microsoft. That's it."

Microsoft usually plays catch up - this time, Google's got big head starts on multiple fronts. Watch - they will be going after the corporate world soon.]

I've used dumb terminals in the past. (Yes, I was in IT back in the bad old days) They suck.

Why? the fact that the terminal and the server can be in the same machine is, in almost all the cases, accidental.

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What do you do when you don't have access to the internet?

Well, I can't do almost anything useful while I am not connected to the Internet with my Desktop either. Soon or late I need a doc that I dont have. Any computer without Internet connection is not very useful imho.

I take it you've never used a dumb terminal? You can't do anything with it unless it's connected to the network/server. That is its sole purpose in life, to connect to the server. There are no apps that run on it, no games, no nothing.

My programming pals and I are thinking long range. I agree about dumb terminals of yore - but the comparison of internet terminals with old escape-sequence ASCII green screens is only partly correct. Looking at current trends, in a few years, the 'modern' internet terminal will be anything but dumb: imagine that your solid-state disk terminal has a GPU running 12,000 threads supporting a neural network along with multi-core, low power CPUs, tons of memory, and good batteries, all in a pocket-sized package. The neural net helps you find data and code, the CPUs crunch it.

All of these machines may well be pretty tightly coupled - If I were needing to crunch some huge data set, I might be willing to budget in extra power from a "CPU Cycle Rental Company" - of course, google is already working on that Wink

Theory is nice, and so are dreams. But in reality, your standard netbook doesn't do that. From what I'm reading about Google OS, it isn't going to allow you to do anything unless you're connected to the Internet. That does me a lot of good in the middle of nowhere with no wifi or cell signal.

This is what happens when the brains are turned loose. They don't get out much, and usually don't have much experience in the real world.

I take it you've never used a dumb terminal? You can't do anything with it unless it's connected to the network/server. That is its sole purpose in life, to connect to the server. There are no apps that run on it, no games, no nothing.

And whats the problem with that? You use the terminal as an interface for the server. Your linux box has a client/server logic also, and as I said before, the fact that the terminal and the server are phisicaly running in the same computer is trivial.

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it isn't going to allow you to do anything unless you're connected to the Internet. That does me a lot of good in the middle of nowhere with no wifi or cell signal.

In the middle of nowhere you dont need a computer, you need a car. Netbook, Desktop, Notebook, Pda, all are useless these days without Internet connection. The box I am using now is running VL, not Google OS, and I still dont want it without Internet.

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This is what happens when the brains are turned loose. They don't get out much, and usually don't have much experience in the real world.

Ummmm

Logged

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

It's interesting topic that was started. I can only speak from experience in the rural US. Where I live constant connectivity or any form it is a pipe dream. Cellular is a jokeif you travel. Even in more urban areas service is patchy. Without that being in place then the rest is moot.

A computer without an internet connection does have value at least for me and my clients.We keep a our data local systems since internet connections are not something to be counted on. It is more expensive HDD space wise however it is the only option. The biggest improvement for my clients and myself were the improvements in laptops. As far as netbooks, the are great tools and can keep things portable in and around our homes, but not much further.

While large populations enjoy connectivity we in rural areas have to cope without since the infrastructure is not available and no one is rushing to provide anything better.

It is hard to conceive that any administrator would allow company data to be on the "cloud" or whatever you wish to refer to it. Allowing a company the specializes in search and data miningto have access to your data is not imho a good idea. Imagine that someone wanted information on a competitor, hack Google and there it is.

IT chases it's tail to keep systems and networks secure, and fail all the time. The outlook for the future in not bright either in this regard.

I saw a mention of neural networks, hmm. I remember while a child in school the future looked alot different. Our cars would be flying and machines doing our work. Not much has changed sinceI was in school. I see the same thing here. Using a neural network if evolved is a long way off.

Bingo... And I drive trucks for a living, so being in places without internet access is very common. Yet, I still need the notebook for logs, paperwork, receipts, etc. Having everything on a "cloud" when I can't even access it makes for a very unproductive truck.

That is correct bigpaws, but you are mentioning a special case... I bet Google OS is not targeted to those use cases.Some companies do store data in the cloud, but they own the cloud also Some people does not work in an office but connects to a VPN instead.There is a lot of examples and cases where a "cloud" fails and something like Google OS is not suitable, that doesnt mean there is not a market for it.

Logged

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

It may be better, for now at least, to work from a computer rather than a dumb terminal. But not much better. A few years back, Negroponte was well on his way to putting inexpensive computing power into the hands of the world's poor (One Laptop per Child). He used a cheap machine that was not much better than a dumb terminal. I got one. Then Microsoft came along and made him put Windows on it, pretty much sounding One Laptop per Child's death nell

Now, along comes the Google OS. If runs on a dumb terminal, Google can take up Negroponte's gauntlet. Negroponte's idea was that each machine could act as a wireless relay, allowing internet access is the most remote of places.

I think Google is on to something. And, that its linux-based, is all the better.

Seems to me we've addressed point 1 pretty well. You have to stop thinking "dumb" terminal - PC's that work as portals are not dumb anymore - and they'll only get smarter (my point) and lighter (John's point). And because connectivity *eventually* won't be a problem, Rodrigo's point will be valid --- it won't matter where the data or app lives or runs.

Point 2: You have to understand that security is an *agreement* --- my data center, for example, is "in the cloud." I'm remoted into it right now with a program that's not much better than a terminal emulator. But it's a "graphics" terminal emulator I see the exact screen of the machine I'm remoted into - I could care less whether it's under my desk or 1,000 miles away (which it is).

Is it safe? I'll bet you'd have a tough time getting them to reveal anything about what's there. Same with google - *if the agreements are such* that they prohibit certain access. The cloud IS NOT a cloud - it's a highly configurable, segmented infrastructure. I VoiP all the time, over a QoS level 2, VPN via the "cloud" using SSL. Again, there's no way - unless you cut into my pipes, that you'll get anything. What you may not be considering is that Google really is nothing more than a big data center. Sure, you'll counter that they can watch, scan, search anything --- but so too can an employee of the data center we're using. If he's not authorized to do so, and he get's caught, he'll be fired or even prosecuted. Same with Google *according to the agreements* between Google and a customer. The counter that it's unsafe is much more a legal issue, than a technical one.

Point 3:

It's just a matter of time before the entire planet is networked, and at high speed, high bandwidth. Why? Follow the money. What landlines can't reach, cell-tower technology, or satellites will. The economies of scale will make satellites progressively less expensive - and more profitable - just like it did with cell phones.

Consider what satellite-based "Direct T.V." in the US costs now - about $35/month. That's what I was paying for a *dial-up* line c.a. 10 years ago. Yes, Direct T.V. is essentially only one way. But that's only a technical problem. The required high gigaHertz transmission frequencies and spread spectrum technologies already exist, doing robust, high speed, bi-directional earth-satellite communications. If you don't believe it, then consider what the military's have had for a long time already. Yes, sat.com. is expensive - but that's now, without much economy of scale. And were not even talking about repeater-based WiFi. Any HAM want to chime in here and describe how *one* repeater on a mountain top can give coverage to hundreds of square miles that were dark before? Such a repeater can be setup in hours. Even for something more sophisticated, look how fast they build cell towers. They can also drive a truck in and pop up a mobile tower in a day.

The cloud and amorphous computing is the future. It's not a dream. It's a money machine. If you don't see where this is going, then you might well be asleep at the virtual wheel. :-P

Lets' say your company had Seattle data center for your cloud. That was down for 36 hours and longer. Now how do you work? How long for your backups to be made available. How long before you start losing customers since you can't work?

It's a nice idea, but lacks redundancy and fail over. I am not implying that it does not have a use. I am saying that it is not a cure all.

It's just a matter of time before the entire planet is networked, and at high speed, high bandwidth. Why? Follow the money. What landlines can't reach, cell-tower technology, or satellites will. The economies of scale will make satellites progressively less expensive - and more profitable - just like it did with cell phones.

Consider what satellite-based "Direct T.V." in the US costs now - about $35/month. That's what I was paying for a *dial-up* line c.a. 10 years ago. Yes, Direct T.V. is essentially only one way. But that's only a technical problem. The required high gigaHertz transmission frequencies and spread spectrum technologies already exist, doing robust, high speed, bi-directional earth-satellite communications. If you don't believe it, then consider what the military's have had for a long time already. Yes, sat.com. is expensive - but that's now, without much economy of scale. And were not even talking about repeater-based WiFi. Any HAM want to chime in here and describe how *one* repeater on a mountain top can give coverage to hundreds of square miles that were dark before? Such a repeater can be setup in hours. Even for something more sophisticated, look how fast they build cell towers. They can also drive a truck in and pop up a mobile tower in a day.

The cloud and amorphous computing is the future. It's not a dream. It's a money machine. If you don't see where this is going, then you might well be asleep at the virtual wheel. :-P

cheers- Howard

It will be longer than you think. You are correct in assuming that economics drives expansion, which is why there are so many dead spots and areas with no internet access at all. There aren't enough individuals in the area to warrant expansion of high speed access or even cellular access.

Attempting to compare a HAM repeater with WIFI doesn't work in this case (former military comm troop here). The frequencies involved are very different. HAM frequencies are able to travel further without the need of a repeater. WIFI is short range and is more susceptible to interference. One only needs to look at the cell companies who have been attempting to wire major cities with WIFI access. The issues that have cropped up have proven to be very expensive to overcome, and plans have either been dropped or postponed for the aggressive roll out of access using this means. Of course, many will say use another frequency. The government holds the keys to frequency access and the ranges needed are not going to be released to the public anytime soon.

Google has the habit of rolling out a shiny new toy, only to drop it later on when the next bauble hits the radar screen. One only needs to look at Google Video, Google Notebook, Jaiku microblogging service and the Dodgeball mobile social network to see the proof of this. Unless Google OS is embraced by a huge crowd immediately upon release, it will die a quiet death much like some of Google's other products have.

You know, we all aren't really that far apart in perspectives here. Good and interesting discussion.

Quote from: bigpaws

Lets' say your company had Seattle data center for your cloud. That was down for 36 hours and longer. Now how do you work?

You don't - you go to the coffee shop for doughts. Then, coffee in hand, you fire the head of Networking for being such a dumbcluck in contracting with such a company. Or, if you don't have the $$ for proper data center redundancy, you keep it in house.

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It's a nice idea, but lacks redundancy and fail over. I am not implying that it does not have a use. I am saying that it is not a cure all.

Agreed. Please keep in mind that I'm looking ahead when these costs come down to the point that data centers (with immediate redunancy) become more cost effective than doing it in-house. At some break point, it becomes cheaper to use a data center.But it has to be done correctly. Otherwise, as you point out, you loose customers!

Quote from: retired1af

It will be longer than you think. You are correct in assuming that economics drives expansion, which is why there are so many dead spots and areas with no internet access at all. There aren't enough individuals in the area to warrant expansion of high speed access or even cellular access.

Yes, I'm not really specifying a time frame --- perhaps, it's as Bigpaws mentions --- maybe we'll have full coverage when cars fly But it will happen. The area's of lowest population density will be covered by defaulting overlap of higher density areas. That's already happening. When a market is saturated, they start looking for the others. China, sans the Mongolian Desert, will be wired before rural Kansas, I'd bet.

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Attempting to compare a HAM repeater with WIFI doesn't work in this case (former military comm troop here). The frequencies involved are very different.

Certainly, but high gigaHertz stuff is clean and can be beamed like microwaves or off sats. Wifi is only one example. Hams do moonbounces. Just recently they did a Venus bounce. Sat.Com. covers whatever it sees. Regardless of the technical issues, they are merely technical issues that will be solved - because there's so much *dough* involved. Repeaters for Wifi work. Another day, another new technology.

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Unless Google OS is embraced by a huge crowd immediately upon release, it will die a quiet death much like some of Google's other products have.

I couldn't agree with you more. All speculation aside, it will be interesting to see what actually happens.